As well as being a great place to store food, the humble fridge often plays host to one of the most timelessly playful word games ever invented.
We dare say that those little magnetised letters have provoked more laughs and gasps over the years than any number of Scrabble games.
Given the playful, social, tactile nature of the concept, then, it's a wonder that games haven't made better use of the idea. Step forward
Fridge Words.
Icy expressionFridge Words is an asynchronous multiplayer word game in the vein of
Wordament or
Scramble With Friends. The key difference is that playful fridge interface.
Each game sees you spelling out words from a jumble of letters, sliding them onto a representation of a fridge. Once these words are formed properly the points tally will add to your overall score.
You can chop and change these letters at will. Removing a letter from a formed word in order to help form a better word elsewhere will fluidly subtract the relevant score on the fly.
Tricky letters get you better scores, as in Scrabble, while longer words will also reward you with lots of points. Silver or gold letters also net you a bonus.
In a neat nod to the real art of fridge words, you can also flip letters such as 'm', 'u', and 'b' over to form 'w', 'n', and 'q' respectively.
Word upYou have 90 seconds to put the best run of words together possible, after which the scores are totted up and compared with your rival's.
IAPs explainedIAPs net you coins to spend on bonus power-ups.
Time boost adds 30 seconds to the clock, while the blank letter power-up adds a new letter to the fridge.
While these are a help, they don't unbalance the game or give you an unfair advantage over other players due to the limited number of letters available. The best wordsmith always wins. |
These rivals can be from your Facebook buddies list, or you can just type in a
Fridge Words username to make contact (you have to sign up, unfortunately). You can also just play a random game.
In truth, the fast, fluid, and playful nature of the game doesn't lend itself to asynchronous play as well as something like
Words With Friends. You don't want to wait to see how your opponent fares in 30 minutes' time - you want to know right now.
Part of that, too, is because each game is pretty samey and fleeting. You don't have that same sense of investment in a round as in the aforementioned Zynga hit. Obviously it's a bit more meaningful with friends.
Fridge Words is a pleasantly brisk and breezy social word game with a clever core conceit. We doubt it will keep you playing quite as long or as competitively as some of its rivals, but the simple joy of spelling 'poo' using an inverted 'd' remains as fun as ever.
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